Rootin’ Tootin’ Facts About “The Magnificent Seven” That Will Send You Back To The Old West

The Magnificent Seven Was A Magnificent Bomb When It Came Out

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It might be looked at as a cinematic masterpiece today, but when it was released in 1960, The Magnificent Seven was a disaster the movie studio wished it could have seen coming. Audiences stayed away from theaters and critics called it, “pallid, pretentious, and overlong.”

When Academy Award nominations were announced, the film was nearly shut out. It managed one nomination for Best Original Score. Elmer Bernstein lost to Ernest Gold (Exodus), but revisionist history tells a different story. In 2005, the American Film Institute named the score the eighth greatest of all-time.